If you're like me, you turned on the water this morning and never gave it a thought. You probably didn't grow up in the middle of a desert, then. Some years ago Hollywood produced an Oscar-winning movie about the life of the legendary Lawrence of Arabia. After some of the victories that made him famous, this British hero took some of his Arab friends to Paris with him. since they had grown up in the desert, they were amazed by the running water in their hotel room. On the day there were packing to go home, Lawrence found them trying to remove the bathroom faucets. They wanted to take them home with them - so they could have running water back home! Lawrence explained to them that the water actually came from the reservoirs in the mountains outside the city, not from the faucets. They thought the water was coming from what it actually was coming through.

Not long ago, I saw two police cars, blazing down the highway, lights and sirens going strong. Chances are, they didn't decide to go wherever they were going - the dispatcher did. All day long, an officer cruises in his car, listening to the crackle of that police radio. Then suddenly he or she hears something like this - "Unit 3 - disturbance at Franklin and North Ave. - respond immediately." And he's off! Just because the dispatcher told him to.

Several years ago our whole family had to go for blood tests - the doctor said it was time to check everyone's cholesterol. Which means needles. Which meant one of our sons decided to leave us for a little while. He had just had some blood drawn, and he said, "I'm feeling a little weak." Yup. He proceeded to pass out. Now he might have been the strongest person in our family - but each person's reaction is different to this little exercise. A few moments later he came to and muttered that famous question, "What happened?" Then he passed out again. Later, he told us what he remembered from opening his eyes that first time - his mother's concerned face - and, in his words, "seeing this real old nurse." It's funny how strong those just-waking-up impressions are.

When Walt Disney animated the story of Snow White, he created seven memorable - if short - characters - the Seven Dwarfs. Yes, you can be short and memorable. No, I'm not going to ask you to name all seven dwarfs - I don't think I can. But I can remember that little song they sang on the way to work. Now, they didn't exactly work in a climate-controlled office building. They worked in a mine all day. But each day, they would merrily march off to their job singing, "Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to work we go." What a great way to approach your work each day.

Anyone who can tackle their responsibilities with a song is no dwarf. He or she is a giant!

I will never forget my Grandmother Irene. She was one funny lady. She laughed a lot, she gave me money a lot, she was the life of the party. Some people in our family think she was a big influence on my personality. That's not a very nice thing to say about a woman who is no longer here to defend herself. But there's no doubt my grandmother had a great impact on my life. But I almost never got to meet her. She had a serious bout with cancer before I was born.

It was another crazy day in my life of crazy days. I was speaking in downtown Philadelphia early in the morning and then out in the suburbs later in the morning. The Billy Graham team members had organized all this had arranged for the committee chairman to lead us from one meeting to another. The only way we could make both meetings was to race out of Meeting 1 and take the fastest possible route to Meeting 2. We got behind the chairman and began what turned out to be a modern version of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. He really knew how to get around that city - including skillful maneuvering in and out of lanes. We had only one hope of getting to our goal - staying very close to the man who was leading us.

When you get into Missouri and Arkansas, you are entering cave country. And the tourist signs prove it, believe me. You could spend an entire vacation just touring caverns, using your imagination to see how that stalagmite looks like Snoopy or an Indian chief. As we were roaring down the Interstate one chilly day, we saw this sign that said, "Fantastic Caverns - a warm 60 degrees." In winter, 60 sounds pretty warm, I guess. What do you bet they change the sign in the summer. "Fantastic Caverns - a cool 60 degrees." And in summer, 60 degrees sounds pretty cool. Interesting - the seasons change; the cave never does.

One of the men from our Team stopped me the other day and said, "Have you been down to the men's room lately?" That's not usually something we discuss - so I was anxious to find out why he wanted to know. "I walked in and smelled this beautiful aroma." Well, I had to agree that we wouldn't normally associate a public rest room with a beautiful aroma. He went on to say, "When I got back to my office, it had that same beautiful aroma." And what was the explanation for this spreading fragrance? Clarene, the wonderful volunteer who cleans our offices every week, had been doing her scrubbing and spraying. And though we didn't see her in any of those rooms that day, she left that great aroma wherever she had been.

I was speaking at a winter conference in Canada - and the word cold took on a whole new meaning to me. The temperature was minus-40 Fahrenheit - literally the coldest temperature I had ever experienced. When I walked in the room, people stood and sang, "Freeze a jolly good fellow." I really don't like to wear hats or hoods, but I learned to do it that weekend. One Canadian teenager told me he had been outside on his farm, in this cold, for 30 seconds and his ear literally froze - and part of it broke off. That is cold. I had about a five-minute walk ahead of me - believe me I had my parka hood on! I didn't realize you can do permanent damage in no time.

Well, our kids have reached that age - the age when they're old enough to tell us how we did parenting them. In fact, a while back we got into one of those uproarious "remember when" conversations. The subject was various times we had disciplined them. We explained to them how we had tried to discipline them by the principle of natural consequences - experiencing the most natural negative outcomes in the area where they had disobeyed. So if you did something bad with your mouth, you didn't get to use your mouth for a while - or you got it washed out with soap. If you did something bad with your hands, you didn't get to use your hands for awhile. At which point our eldest son said, "But I never did anything wrong with my bottom!" Which launched a discussion of great spankings we have known - including the ones we are now told didn't hurt. Well, this went on for over an hour. It was a laughing and loving and learning time for all of us - and a reminder of what is probably a parent's biggest challenge.

Waking up early most mornings is not an option for me. If I oversleep, it means missing a plane or a speaking commitment or radio broadcasts or an important meeting. In other words, my clock radio had better work. And it does. Even on the days when many other clock radios don't. Because the power went out during the night, that is. There have been mornings when I have been awakened by my clock radio - and looked over at the other one in the room and seen it blinking at me some time when it was the middle of the night. Now, that clock was plugged into the wall - and sometime during the night the external power supply had failed. Good thing I wasn't depending on that! But mine always comes through - because it's powered by batteries! What keeps it going is inside!

If you've ever stayed in a hotel or motel, you've experienced the amazing work of the Room Fairy. You know, that wonderful creature who miraculously puts your room back together while you're out. Of course, they don't always clean your room. The other day the Room Fairy never came - and it was my fault. Because I was sleeping in and also doing a lot of intense preparation, I hung the "Do Not Disturb" sign on my door. Later in the day, I noticed a piece of paper that had been slid under my door. Here's what it said. "Housekeeping (that's the Room Fairy's real name) did not clean your room today in honor of the Do Not Disturb sign that was on your door." Well, as the kids would say, "Duh." By the next day, the trash cans were overflowing, the towels were shot, the toilet paper and Kleenex were going or gone - the mess was accumulating. All because of my dumb sign.

If you think all American history is boring, you need to check out the greatest American adventure ever - the Lewis and Clark Expedition. It's attracting all kinds of new attention as its bicentennial approaches - a major public television series, a mini-series, best-selling books. And it deserves all the attention. Just as America bought the Louisiana Purchase and suddenly owned much of the West, President Jefferson asked Meriwether Lewis to put together an expedition to explore the unknown territory. Imagine 30 men, going where no non Indian had ever gone, seeing what no non Indian had ever seen - like the Rocky Mountains, animals like antelope and prairie dogs, tribes that had ever contacted.

The first time I heard someone talking about an invisible airplane, my reaction was, "I don't think so." But, in a sense, there is such a thing. Not exactly an airplane that people can't see - but an airplane radar can't see. It's called the "Stealth" bomber. Of course, if a bomber is headed for you, you want to know it. And radar has always been what alerted defenders to that bomber. But the "Stealth" is able to come in under the range of radar - and invade air space undetected - and do damage it might never have been able to do if it had been detected. Nobody realizes they're in danger until it's too late.

When you hear the word "superstar," you think of someone like, say, Michael Jordan or some box office giant. I'm sorry, but that's a pretty lame use of the word when you hear about the kind of star astronomers have recently discovered. It is the largest known star in the universe! Conventional telescopes had missed it because of vast dust clouds. But the Hubble space telescope picked it up. And it's 186 million miles wide and 10 million times brighter than the Sun! That's a superstar. Don't even try to comprehend one star that enormous! Interesting footnote - according to many theories on how stars are formed, a star this large is an impossibility! No, it's not.

Most of the courtrooms I've been exposed to are on TV. But not long ago, I had a moment in a courtroom that I will never forget. It began when we learned the whereabouts of a young Native American friend we had been trying to locate for a while - we'll call her Cathy. We learned, almost miraculously, that after a dark time away from God, Cathy was in jail in Nebraska. We got that word on Friday as I was leaving Michigan to meet our Native American summer team in South Dakota on Monday night. We ate up the Interstate trying to get to Nebraska before Cathy went before the judge. She had no idea we were coming - until we saw her during Sunday afternoon visiting hours.

You've probably seen an actor named Iron Eyes Cody in many Indian roles. He tells an old legend about a young Indian brave, going through the rites of manhood. As he hiked solo into this beautiful valley, he decided to test himself against that rugged, snow-capped mountain that dominated the valley. When he reached the top, he felt like he was standing on the rim of the world. Then he heard a rustle at his feet - it was a snake. Before he could move, the snake spoke. He said, "I am about to die. It's too cold for me up here, and there's no food. Put me under your shirt and take me down to the valley." The young brave refused. He said, "I know your kind - you're a rattlesnake. If I pick you up, you'll bite and your bite will kill me." But the snake said, "No, I promise to treat you differently. If you do this for me, I won't harm you."

I wonder if they've ever run out of flowers in England before. Apparently, the florists did when Princess Diana died. No one could have ever predicted the massive public outpouring of love and grief that came from the British people in the week following her death. Remember that sea of flowers that enveloped the front of Buckingham Palace? And Diana's personal residence at Kensington Palace? You couldn't get anywhere near the gates - the flowers seemed to stretch out and around endlessly! Someone who had been close to the Princess said, "Diana had no idea she was loved like this." That's sad. But not unique.

Moving day. Good news, bad news. The process of moving is horrendous - the result - once you find everything you packed - is wonderful. My Administrative Assistant Gayle recently got to experience all that good news and bad news. But actually, the bad news turned out to be not so bad. It could have been bad. Gayle is one woman with some heavy stuff to move - refrigerator, stove, piano. Plus lots of smaller things, of course. I was out of town when Gayle moved - good planning, huh? But I talked to her a few days after the big migration. And all she could talk about was the difference her friends had made. The guys pitched in on the especially exciting things - like the piano. The women carried some of the other items. And even her little nephews joined the team - they carried the little nephew sized stuff. Each person carried what he or she could. Gayle said, "Now when I look at each piece of furniture in my apartment, I think of a person - the one who helped carry that particular burden." The burdens turned out to have a lot of blessing in them - because of friends who helped her carry what she could never carry alone.

Well, I'm happy to report to you that I have no personal problem with the paparazzi. Those celebrity photographers have been very respectful of my privacy. In fact, they could care less about anything I do. But, in reality, these freelance celebrity photographers have been the object of some bigtime criticism - most vehemently after their pursuit of Princess Diana may have contributed to the circumstances of her tragic death. Their prying lenses seem to be everywhere, trying to capture a picture of someone famous doing something outrageous, something sensational, something lurid. And, unfortunately, the personal lifestyles of a lot of people provide those kinds of things to shoot. Of course, when it comes to our lives, we want privacy - no intrusive cameras capturing moments we would rather not have everyone know about. There aren't many people, frankly, who could afford to have a camera capturing everything they do.